Dominican Amber - Fossil Ecosystems of North America: A Guide to the Sites and their Extraordinary Biotas - page 223

copal mining industry in the last century.
Copal will melt with low heat and it was
used in the past to make varnish and
moulded into objects such as trinkets and
even false teeth. During the amberization
process, fresh resin first loses its
volatile oils, then polymerization begins.
Once the resin has hardened (to 1-2 on
the Mohs scale) and is no longer pliable
it is called copal. However, in this state it
will dissolve in some organic solvents and
melts at a (relatively) low temperature
(below 150°C). Copal (especially African)
does contain insect and other inclusions
but, being much younger than amber, it
is generally of less interest to the
paleontologist. To form true amber,
polymerization and oxidation must
continue for a longer period of time,
until the material has reached a hardness
of 2-3 on the Mohs scale, will not melt
below about 200°C, and is not soluble
in organic solvents. These physical
properties of amber and copal are useful
to remember because genuine amber
with inclusions can command a good
price in the gem trade, so fakes, often
simply copal or made with melted copal,
can be recognized. One excellent
example of a forgery was discovered by
Andrew Ross of the Natural History
Museum in London (Grimaldi et al .,
1994). He was interested in a fly in
apparently genuine amber which
belonged to an advanced modern family
otherwise unknown in the fossil record.
On examination under the microscope
with a rather warm lamp, a crack
appeared. Further inspection revealed
that a piece of copal had been cut in half,
one side hollowed out and the (modern)
fly inserted, then glued carefully back
together again!

10,000 BC. Amber was called succinum
(sap-stone) by the Romans and elektron by
the ancient Greeks; the English word
electricity is derived from the static
electric effect produced when amber is
rubbed by a soft cloth. Pliny, in the 1st
century AD, was the first person to
describe the properties of amber and
correctly determine its origin as the
fossilized resin from trees; other ideas of
its origin concerned the tears of deities
or dried excretions of beasts. Pliny
recognized that the traded amber
originated from the north of Europe, and
so Baltic amber is both the oldest
recorded and best known of all amber
deposits.
Owing to its beauty, and hence value,
trade in amber has been an integral part
of Baltic cultures, and from ancient times
to the present day, amber has been
collected from the shores of the Baltic
Sea (see Selden and Nudds, 2004,
Chapter 13 for a review). The presence of
amber in the Dominican Republic - and
the New World - was first recorded in the
journals of Christopher Columbus, and
it has been found in native jewelry, but
Dominican amber did not start to be
seen in Europe which has always been the
center of the amber trade until
the twentieth century. In the latter part of
the last century, Dominican amber
started to surpass Baltic in availability and
is now the commonest amber to be found
in gem stores, at least in North America.
The Dominican Republic is also a
popular holiday island, and the amber
trade there is booming too. However,
taking amber fossils out of the
country requires permission from
the National Museum of Natural History.
The Dominican Republic forms the
eastern half of the Caribbean island of
Hispaniola, in the Greater Antilles, which
it shares with Haiti; it should not be
confused with the Caribbean island of
Dominica, which is in the Lesser
Antilles to the east. The first scientific

H ISTORY OF DISCOVERY
OF D OMINICAN AMBER
Amber was familiar and of special
significance to ancient civilizations; it has
been found in jewelry dating to before